Employees say they've worked a month without pay

Employees for a local mental health clinic say they haven’t gotten paid for a month, and that the paychecks have been inconsistent for even longer.

Lauren Baheri

Employees for a local mental health clinic say they haven’t gotten paid for a month, and that the paychecks have been inconsistent for even longer. One former employee has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor.

The paycheck inconsistencies started in May. The situation continued into October and November, workers say. Now employee Sonya Boler says, she hasn’t been paid in a month. “We were supposed to have gotten paid last week, but we haven’t gotten a letter or anything,” she said.

Former program director Malisha Ross remembers staff becoming upset about the delays in the past. Many left for work elsewhere, she said. And that had an effect on the services being offered, she said. Genesis Health offers mental and developmental health-care services and an intensive in-home program for children at risk of being taken out of the home.

Genesis Health works with Partners Behavioral Health Management. The agency receives taxpayer dollars to cover Medicaid patients. It contracts the services to health clinics like Genesis Health. Those clinics are paid for services after filing claims with Partners, much like a doctor’s office would file with an insurance company, said Stacy Bryant, a Partners spokeswoman.

Claims made from Genesis House to Partners are all processed and paid, the agency said. Genesis once had a contract with MeckLINK Behavioral Healthcare but lost it. Ross filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor in May. A letter in response told her the department had launched an investigation into the company. That’s all she knows, she said.

The letter didn’t convey what the investigation might have found. But Ross believes the response means the feds took her complaint seriously. Ross says the company rarely gave reasons for the late paychecks but at one time said the checks would be late because of a scheduling conflict on Veterans Day with Partners Behavioral Health Management.

According to Bryant, Partners typically pays claims in seven days. That’s for claims that are filed correctly. Others could be delayed or not come in at all. Ross left Genesis Health in late October and said she is still waiting for her final paychecks.

“I just want to get paid for the services I provided,” she said. “We provided the best possible services that we could provide, even without pay.”

Genesis Health President Kelvin Hall could not be reached for comment.

You can reach reporter Lauren Baheri at 704-869-1842 or Twitter.com/lbaheri.